"What it must look and smell like when a movie brain vomits. Truly worthless."
-Variety

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Short Reviews - August 2014

Nothing ever happens in August!!!

The Good Doctor - This just in: Legolas just threw a punch at Justin Bieber! Street cred achieved.

Inventing David Geffen - On PBS. Remember PBS? Doing stuff the private sector would never do, like pay tribute to David Geffen. Just started watching it, and somehow I don't think Monkey Zetterland's going to be a part of it.

Jayne Mansfield's Car - AKA Even More of A Family Thing. Good double bill with Parkland

Monty Python's Flying Circus - Well, I hate to go to war with the A.V. Club, but I think they're being far too hard on the "Mr. Neutron" episode. The fact that it's being reviewed some forty-odd years after it first aired is testament to ... something! Okay, so all the Python episodes weren't great. I like the Mr. Neutron one, damn it. Besides, it fits in all too well with our now comic-book and Star Wars-dominated culture.

Fifty Shades of Grey - What is it with peoples' fascination with billionaires? We gotta get over this together, people. I wonder if millionaires ever feel left out. They should, because they're losers. Mere millionaires just will not do anymore. Bore-ring.

Mr. Saturday Night - Alas, more melodramatic than everyone expected, but maybe time will be kind to this one. As film critics often have to do, they have to boil a film down to one scene, so for me, here it is: Buddy Young, his brother and his wife are all sitting on the couch watching the classic "This Is Your Story" sketch with Sid Caesar. The brother and the wife are laughing and enjoying themselves, but Buddy Young (Billy Crystal) is sitting there, stone-faced. Why? Because Sid was the man, that's why, and Buddy knew it! This just might be Billy Crystal's masterpiece.

Born on the Fourth of July - I was going to launch into giving this thing more Oscars. What a strange year! Stone won for directing, but Driving Miss Daisy won for Best Picture. Why, the guy who directed that didn't even get nominated! Go figure.

The Teahouse of the August Moon - That's more like it! This is one of those films that people always say they watched, like Lawrence of Arabia or Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz (1939). But I bet they were texting the whole time, or whatever the equivalent activity was at that time

September - Fare thee well, Elaine Stritch. So much for the cast reunion of this one... oh, right, and Mia Farrow as well

The Hunt for Red October - Hooray for Mace Neufeld's kid or grandkid, the greatest freakin poker player on TV right now!

Sweet November - I think I've said this already about Pat O'Connor's movies, but it bears repeating, and for two reasons. I know, there's always two reasons, so here they are. 1) Someone seems to have secret access to my blog and they seem to be taking down stuff they find objectionable, like my diatribes about Pat O'Connor, and 2) his movies are the stuff that classy DVD collections are made of! You got your Lawrence of Arabias and your Out of Africas. Every collection must have those two. And from there, it's nothing but Pat O'Connor. What more do you need? You got your Inventing the Abbotts, you got your Dancing at Lughnasa, you got your Stars and Bars. You know, movies about photogenic white people doing photogenic white things. Okay, sure, if you're black it'll be Tyler Perry in your collection, so just think of Pat O'Connor as the white Tyler Perry. Sure, he's not as prolific, but there's probably a holier-than-thou quasi-racist reason for that, who knows?